What makes a horrible film?

So, this is Austin Cinephile, a place for the collection of essays about cinema love, not cinema hate. Negatively isn’t exactly what we’re aiming for. That said, love and hate are often intimately intertwined (just ask my ex-wife), and one cannot experience one without the other. Daniel once wrote, in his now-famous Lord Love a Duck review, that “You’ve got to constantly watch bad cinema in order to truly understand good cinema.” This is an important thing to keep in mind.

Further, great cinema is a pursuit, an adventure that is often wrought with mediocrities along the way. We must all see bad film as the plague that it is, and be able to move past it in order to find the gems of the screen.

This week, we explore what characteristics, energies, and events lead to uninspiring cinema.

Daniel

What makes a movie horrible? The absence of ambition! Lack of soul! Uninspired participation! A movie is bad if the people involved are not wholly committed to the cinema as an institution which must constantly be built up and torn down. A movie is rotten if the actors are concerned with themselves and their performances, if the producers are trying to make a derivative work, or if the director hasn’t seen any Renoir films.

Reject bad cinema. Discredit those who espouse the virtue of a film that is anything less than brilliant. The creative spirit should be embraced above all else. Encourage experimentation and expression. Shun mediocrity.

The effect of a horrible film is emptiness. There is no list of techniques for a bad or good film. Only ideas! Only heart! Bad cinema takes us nowhere, it contributes nothing, and it should be stomped out.

Michael

I can’t say I’m pleased with this prompt. The question is just so large and nonspecific that to attempt to answer it would result in answers just as unwieldy, over generalized, and surely dull. A horrible movie is a movie with a bad script? With bad acting? Poor direction? Dull cinematography? Horrible sound? All of the above? As film critics it is our job to examine cinema, to assess what works and what doesn’t. But this job is executed on a film-by-film basis. What works in one film might fail horribly in another and vise versa. There are no steadfast rules for what makes a great film or a horrible one. That is the beauty of cinema. There is a near infinite number of techniques for all aspects of the production process just waiting to be arranged in interesting and effective ways. And maybe therein lies my broad, overgeneralized, nondescript answer. Good movies are those that utilize the tools of cinema, employing them in effective ways and with inspiring results. Horrible films do not do this. They either underuse their tools or apply them in uncreative ways.

Steph

My roommate and I recently watched (me for the third time, her for the first) New Moon. During our viewing, I realized that I am the Paula Abdul of film critics. I want to award way too many points for effort, and it’s difficult for me to write off a film as “horrible” if I can find even just one or two elements I enjoyed. I wouldn’t call New Moon horrible, for example, because I think its cinematography has some really lovely moments, some of its supporting actors are quite good (Michael Sheen’s role gets better every time I watch it), and Alexandre Desplat’s score is sublime. Unsurprisingly, then, if I were to make a list of films I consider horrible, it would be a relatively short list.

However, for the purpose of this exercise, I want to focus on a very subjective element of film viewing that often affects our opinions more than I think we realize: our expectations. It is nearly impossible to watch a film without them. Perhaps you’ve read the novel the filmmaker is adapting; perhaps you read a review or heard two people talking about it on the subway; perhaps you’re familiar with one of the actors or the director. Even a knowledge of the cinematic calendar (brainless blockbusters in the summer, award-bait in the winter) can influence your expectations as you walk into that cool, dark space.

I often have a hard time judging movies to be terrible if they exceed my low expectations. A few years ago a co-worker of mine at the independent video store where I work recommended that I see a film called Dedication. Mandy Moore featured prominently on the DVD cover, and since it had gone straight to DVD, I didn’t have high hopes. However, I was pleasantly surprised by Billy Crudup’s performance and some of the unusually phrased dialogue, and I found myself liking the film more than it probably deserved, objectively speaking.

Of course, the inverse of my expectation hypothesis also holds true. If my high expectations for a film are disappointed, my opinion is often harsher than the film deserves. I was so unexpectedly delighted by Iron Man that I went eagerly into the theater for its sequel. I suppose what I saw was adequate. Robert Downey Jr. seemed to be having fun, and he’s a magnetic enough presence that I wasn’t bored. But I wanted fireworks and instead I got noise, and I left the theater discontented and glad I hadn’t paid for my ticket.

Are audience expectations and the extent to which they influence our opinions fair? Perhaps not. Filmmaking is a complicated art. A film is created and shaped by so many different people that writing off an entire film as terrible seems simplistic. And yet terrible films exist, and they are sometimes produced by brilliant filmmakers. Instead of being dismayed, maybe we should be relieved. Perfection is a lot to expect of anyone, and if we can forgive our filmmakers their flops, perhaps we can also let ourselves off the hook every now and again.

Stephen

In general, a horrible film is one in which art is entirely sacrificed at the altar of commerce. Consider the most recent target of critical vitriol: the action-romantic comedy. Films such as The Bounty Hunter, Killers, and Knight and Day are not bad simply because the dialogue is pedestrian, the actors uninterested and uninteresting, and the directing nonexistent, but because the very genre and its structure seem to be the calculated result of audience testing and demographic polling.

It is as if we now have films written, directed, and produced by the marketing departments of the major studios, scattershot contrivances with a few explosions here and some supposedly witty repartee there, meant to be enjoyed by men and women of all ages. This is the cynical mood prevailing in the film industry today. No one can afford to make a film for a specific audience, to take a risk on a film that seems unmarketable to all but a few select groups of moviegoers. Thus, we are given horrible films, films that please everyone but challenge and inspire no one.

However, only a naif would argue that the filmmaking process must always and only be motivated by aesthetics; the film industry has been carefully balanced between beauty and greed since its earliest days. Attention must be paid to those horrible films that exist on the other end of the spectrum from profit-driven drivel, which result from the failure of executives and producers to step in and stop an enthusiastic but misguided director from running a film into the ground. We call these films self-indulgent. For a recent example, one need look no further than Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control, which played like an inside joke between the director, Tilda Swinton, and about three other people. Here, Jarmusch tried to sell a meandering film with no narrative thrust and what can only be called character anti-development by tossing in some faux-philosophical notions and a few meditation scenes. I, for one, wasn’t buying it.

Of course, this brings us to the one advantage self-indulgence has over commercial indifference. My co-writer Daniel Metz happened to love The Limits of Control; all the things that did not work for me worked quite well for him. Therefore, I would argue that, while an agreement can usually be made about horrible mainstream schlock, self-indulgent films are often treasured by some and hated by others. I loved Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, but pretty much everyone else said it was self-indulgent rubbish. This points to the ultimate difficulty of this week’s question: if a few people swear by an artistically ambitious film and defend it all costs, does that automatically exclude it from being as “horrible” as those commercial films? All I know is this: Daniel thought The Limits of Control was one of the ten best films of last year, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t horrible.

What do you think about the auteur theory?

Although the auteur theory (the belief that the director is the “author” of a film and the critical stance associated with it) is out of fashion within the academic and certain enthusiast circles, it is still the most dominant method of understanding film production and organization currently employed by moviegoers. More often than not, a question like, “What films do you like?” results in a list of filmmakers (directors) rather than genres, actors, screenwriters, cinematographers, or any other classification. Further, video stores, newspaper listings, and most other modes of extra-industrial film promotion uses a film’s director as a primary classification marker. Most film reviews, likewise, rely exclusively on a reading of the director’s assumed role in film construction.

While we try not to lean too much on the director’s ivory tower. We attempt to acknowledge the role of editors, cinematographers, screenwriters, producers, and actors/stars in film production. That said, we are certainly guilty of auterist criticism at times. For instance, we recently published a list of our favorite “auteur films.” We also classify/identify films by director in our under-poster text.

This week, we probe our assumptions about the auteur theory and see if we can explain/excuse our behavior.

Michael

This is a tricky question. What do you think of the auteur theory? We here at Austin Cinephile have already declared our love for auteur cinema. But, this question speaks not only to auteurs and their films, but rather to the auteur theory conceptually established by François Truffaut, applied by the other Cahiers du Cinéma critics, and then organized into a theoretical framework and cinematic hierarchy by Andrew Sarris in his essay “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962” (which he later expanded into the book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968).

Sarris' groundbreaking book that introduced America to the auteur theory

Sarris’s application of the auteur theory praises directors that are well versed in all aspects of film production and who have distinct visual and thematic styles. This initial essay received backlash from famed New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, who, in her retaliatory essay “Circles and Squares,” belittles the theory from a number of approaches, not least of which arguing that praising a director’s unchanging style is to praise her/his decline. While many of Kael’s claims are sound and convincing, and while there are surely reasons to reject the auteur theory—particularly Sarris’s application of it—in this regard, Kael misinterprets the point of analyzing and enjoying an auteur’s signature. To seek out an auteur’s signature traits is not solely an act of repetition recognition. Rather it is an attempt, on the one hand, to bask in the familiarity of the auteur’s touch, and, on the other, relish the alteration—and thus the evolution—of that filmmaker’s style.

So, let me conclude with these thoughts. While I tend to use directors as a convenient categorical device, I acknowledge that not all directors are auteurs and that in some instances a film’s auteur may not be the film’s director. Films are a collaborative art, but some filmmaker’s visions and wills are so strong that they are able to harness that collaborative force, shaping it into a recurring cinematic signature. I like the signatures of directors like Woody Allen, David Cronenberg, Akira Kurosawa, and Sergio Leone. I find myself drawn to these auteur filmmakers, knowing that not all of their films are gems and also that there are great films made by filmmakers that are not auteurs. Ultimately, though, the draw of the auteur is the appeal of a unique filmic style, something that is not typical fare. And, while I tend towards auteurs that are good filmmakers in my book (acknowledging that not all auteurs are “good” filmmakers), it is the deviation from that greater cinematic norm that keeps me coming back, even if that deviation falls within a recurring stream of that auteur’s signature. Ultimately, these auteurs that I admire are great filmmakers. Their unique touches are just proof of their original approaches to cinema.

Stephen

I have always struggled with the concept of the auteur theory. Even as a teenage film buff, when the occasional debate would arise over the “A Film by…” phrase that often appears at the beginning for a Scorsese or Tarantino movie, I felt that there were too many other names in the opening credits (and even more in the closing credits) to designate any one person as the author of the film. Now that I have spent time studying with Tom Schatz, whose book Genius of the System points out that the classical Hollywood studio system produced masterpieces of cinema that were “co-authored” by directors, moguls, producers, and crew members galore, I remain resolute in my belief that the concept of the auteur is suspect as a credible theory and more useful as a point of reference and conversation for film lovers.

The literature of the auteur theory often focuses on the vague idea of artistic “vision.” Hitchcock is labeled an auteur because his vision is supposedly apparent from film to film. The auteur theorist would argue that one who is familiar with Hitchcock’s work could easily pick one of his films out of a lineup simply by recognizing certain camera angles, narrative elements, or character traits that the director seems to favor. For me, though, those familiar names in the credits are also important to note. What would so many of Hitchcock’s great films be without the music of Bernard Hermann or the graphics work of Saul Bass? (One need only have seen Frenzy at the Paramount last week to see how a limp score and ordinary opening credit sequence can fail to inspire the viewer in the opening minutes.) Would Scorsese’s Raging Bull or Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction be the revolutionary films they are without the directors’ frequent editing partners Thelma Schoonmaker and Sally Menke working alongside them? Would we have grown tired of looking at a new Woody Allen film every year if not for the revolving door of talented cinematographers that worked on his films, varying the visual appeal of each one?

Saul Bass' iconic title sequence for Hitchcock's PSYCHO

Certainly, I cannot argue that it is important for any work of art to have a firm vision guiding the artistic process to its conclusion, especially in filmmaking where hundreds of people can generate thousands of ideas, and that, for the most part, this initial guiding vision comes from the director. However, I also cannot believe that any finished film is “by” any one person, nor can I agree that a filmmaker’s recurring signature was entirely his or hers to begin with.

It seems that I agree with Pauline Kael’s counter-argument from “Circles and Squares” more than Michael does when it comes to supporting new and original ideas from filmmakers instead of hoping for repeated ones. I’m not sure Scorsese would want his career defined in terms of evolution but instead as a series of attempts to breach unfamiliar cinematic territory and make films that cannot be easily compared. A film like Casino met with several critical shrugs not because it was a bad film but because it seemed like just another Goodfellas, with its Rolling Stones songs and adventurous cameras. When talking about a filmmaker who made a film like Raging Bull a mere four years after making a film like Taxi Driver, familiarity can be a bit of a let-down.

Daniel

My partners have done a very fine job of highlighting the key points and counterarguments associated with the auteur theory and its application, so I will not waste my time in discussing them. Instead, I will try to provide some balanced ideas.

1. Auteur theory works for auteur films. I certainly am not the first person to think of films with this classification system, but I want to put it forward as a very usable plan: there are auteur films and genre films, and we should apply different lenses and critical stances to them. For genre films, we should study the construction of tropes and how certain films deviate from them.

For auteur films, we should consider, as Stephen and Michael have implied, how the film speaks to a filmmaker’s body of work/life’s artistic message. Seeing, for instance, Woody Allen’s constant retelling of a failed relationship with a frigid intellectual and the variations on it help us to understand what poor Woody has been trying to say all these years. The way that changes over the years or in different situations can tell us a good deal about that particular filmmaker’s evolution or style.

2. An auteur cannot make a bad film. This is something that I think is attributed to Truffaut himself. A filmmaker who is able to convey his personal philosophy through both influence on story/scenario and visual style is only capable of producing great works. As such, if we acknowledge that a filmmaker is an auteur (a designation we can determine after seeing the control she or he has over the cinema in just a single work), we must always view their work from the perspective that it is the outcome of a creative artist who is trying to express herself/himself, and necessarily give it higher critical attention and consideration.

3. A director is not the only filmmaker who can be an auteur. While director is the most frequent and most apparent auteur in contemporary and historic cinema, it is not the only job that should be seen as author. There are other positions that can overwhelm the production to the extent of control. Actors can often achieve this; my example here is the Marx Brothers, who are firmly in control of the anarchy that is their thirteen films. Producers can be auteurs, as was Roger Corman. Screenwriters, like Charlie Kaufman, can also take over a film.

The same can be said, although less often, about other roles, and often films can be dually or multi-authored, as the case in films like His Girl Friday (Ben Hecht and Howard Hawks) or Contempt (Godard and Brigitte Bardot)

Who's in control of this frame, Bardot or Godard?

We should look for creativity and brilliance in all aspects of the cinema, and celebrate them. Because we find authorship from a single source within a text does not mean we cannot see other sources of influence and control.

Write about your favorite performance by an actor portraying a real life character

Oftentimes, film actors are so convincingly real that they become the icon for an existing historical figure for future generations. This kind of representation actually happens more often than common sense should allow. How many of us imagine Cleopatra to look like Liz Taylor? Or Claudette Colbert? History comes alive through the cinema in a way that no other art form can make it.

This week, we study those performances that will forever define, comment upon, or critique the real-life subjects, thus addressing and changing history in the process.

Stephen: Tom Hulce as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – AMADEUS

The biopic has acquired a reputation for stuffiness, and with good reason. Many biopics have left this viewer cold, particularly those that strain to accurately recreate the events of someone’s life just as they happened. However, the biopics that take chances with historical fact, that overlook the whole truth in favor of originality and intellectual exploration, have provided us with many memorable films.

One of my absolute favorites of the genre is Milos Forman’s Amadeus, which features a remarkable performance from F. Murray Abraham as the envious Salieri, who picks a fight with God himself after recognizing in the younger Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart the kind of talent he had prayed for but never received. Abraham’s Salieri, as the “patron saint of mediocrity,” provides the aforementioned intellectual exploration, serving as a depiction of what it must be like to have the ability to truly appreciate and analyze art without being able to create it yourself.

For originality, though, the prize goes to Tom Hulce’s portrayal of the wunderkind Mozart. This character, a strange and joyous creation, was written by Peter Shaffer for the stage in 1979, which is notable because it predates the rebel teen movies of the 1980s, films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and much of the John Hughes oeuvre. Hulce’s Mozart is basically an 18th century version of the characters featured in these films; the legendary composer is here re-imagined as an immature, depraved youth, chasing skirt and farting in the presence of noblemen. There is not really a historical precedent for this behavior. I find it interesting that, of the many rumored possibilities for his young death at the age of 35, none of them are syphilis.

As I said, many biopics have collapsed under the weight of their own seriousness, but Hulce ensures that this fate never befalls Amadeus. The screen really does seem to brighten whenever he wanders into the frame, his notoriously impish laugh grating the ears while simultaneously spreading infectious giggles among viewers. Double entendres and other sexual innuendos abound every time he opens his mouth to speak, and where other biopic musicians like Jamie Foxx’s Ray Charles and Joaquin Phoenix’s Johnny Cash turn dour and morose after falling into a spiral of drugs and drink, Hulce has fun with his booze, crashing parties and mocking authority under the influence.

This brings me back to what is the most intriguing element of this film. Its main focus falls on a callow youth’s reckless disregard of an experienced elder, and the film favors the youth. Here is a musical prodigy, thrust into the spotlight at an early age by an opportunistic father, who lacks the maturity to handle the burden of celebrity, which existed long before Britney and Lindsay began offering free peep shows.

Mozart’s undeniable talent imbues him with the kind of self-confidence that leads young and talented artists to make more enemies than friends and act as if they are invincible. This is not the kind of dynamic you’d expect from a period biopic, but thanks to Hulce’s note-perfect performance, we have this one-of-a-kind masterpiece. Also thanks to Mozart’s own music, which plays throughout the film. That never hurts.

Steph: Brad Pitt as Jesse James – THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD

I like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford because it is not a biopic. Biopics are boring. They either attempt to tell an entire life, in which case they are entirely predictable because the sorts of lives that get turned into biopics are all the same, or they attempt to tell a portion of a life, in which case they are even more predictable, because the film that results can follow standard narrative conventions even more closely.

Biopics are also very much about the pleasure of watching two famous identities interact (as when Jamie Foxx played Ray Charles), or about watching a star attempt to physically transform into someone we know he or she is not (like Meryl Streep as Julia Child). We feel pleasure when we recognize the actor in spite of their performance, at knowing better than the movie, at not being fooled. We feel the pleasure of indulging in the performance itself, of being reminded how much we love the real Julia Child, and we feel pleasure at our ability to discern how well Meryl has become her. Finally, we feel pleasure because biopics make us feel that we have gotten to know someone (perhaps better than people who really knew the person), and, unlike a fictional film, this person and their story are real.

I like The Assassination of Jesse James because it is not interested in any of that. While Casey Affleck’s assassin, Robert Ford, is both a twitchy, nervous, doe-eyed revelation and the film’s protagonist, we cannot take our eyes off of Brad Pitt’s Jesse James, and the film knows it. When the narrator tells an audience that eats, sleeps, and breathes celebrity that “Rooms seemed hotter when he was in them. Rains fell straighter. Clocks slowed. Sounds were amplified,” he could just as easily be describing Pitt himself. Watching both Jesse and Pitt alternately revel in and reject this celebrity is what makes this performance so fantastic.

Pitt’s Jesse is neither hero, anti-hero, or villain. He is cruel, capricious, and can’t hold his liquor. We see Pitt as a father who picks up his daughter and whirls her around until she loses a shoe. This is the Pitt we know, the very public father of a tribe of children, and the Jesse we want as our hero.

In the widely-praised train robbery sequence, when Pitt pulls his black kerchief over his nose and looks into the darkness toward the coming train (and directly into the camera), he is terrifying. We’re not used to Pitt as a villain, but perhaps we’ll buy it since he’s so convincing. But Pitt’s Jesse is a more complex beast.

Sitting in his backyard, seen in reverse-shot after the narrator recounts Jesse’s older brother spurning Jesse as “peculiar and temperamental,” Pitt is childlike, the picture of innocence. Is this our villain?

A child’s wooden swing hangs from a tree next to Jesse, and as Pitt smokes a cigar and wraps two snakes around his arm, he tells Affleck, “I give them names.” “Such as?” Affleck asks. “Such as enemies,” Pitt replies, his gaze entranced by the snakes. “I give them names of enemies,” he repeats. He uses a small knife to cut off their heads, and says his wife will fry them in butter and garlic. Is this our hero?

Still later, Jesse beats a young boy to tears, then stands weeping into his horse’s neck and is so overcome with shame he cannot sit straight in the saddle. The camera is close on Pitt’s rage during the beating, but we see only the back of his head as he cries. The entire scene is uncomfortable to watch. We are shown too much of what we don’t want (Pitt’s savage abuse of the boy) and not nearly enough of what we do want (Pitt’s tears). However, we are also torn between our desire not to see Jesse James crying such shameful tears and our desire to be reassured that Jesse is actually a good man who does not deserve the assassination the film’s title has promised us.

This uneasiness is the core of the film, and the willingness with which Pitt embraces it is this performance’s greatest strength. While Pitt’s handsomeness is undiminished despite age and facial hair and a dark dye job, his blue eyes have never seemed as cold or as sad as they do in this film. He quietly embodies all of Jesse James’s contradictions and never once lets us make our minds up about the man.

Michael: David Cross as Allen Ginsberg – I’M NOT THERE

Todd Haynes’ imaginative Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There gave us some of the best performances of 2007. Though none of the characters were actually named after the famed folk singer, each incarnation depicts a different aspect of Dylan’s persona. From his anachronistic early-year embodiment Woody, played brilliantly by the young, yet old-souled Marcus Carl Franklin, to the Hollywood personification Robbie, played by the late Heath Ledger, I’m Not There is a potpourri of daring casting and solid performances. If you think you know where I’m going with my selection, you might want to bite your tongue for just a moment.

Cate Blanchett, the most interesting casting choice and the film’s second best performance behind Franklin, did a spectacular job as the drug bender/Don’t Look Back/electric-era Jude. But, like the 2008 Academy Awards where she was robbed of another Best Supporting Actress Oscar, her weighty performance will again go un-awarded in this post. For, my selection is, in fact, David Cross as the American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

Cross’s Ginsberg first appears in the film while ridding tandem on a golf cart puttering alongside Jude’s limousine. The limo’s passengers notice the wind-whipped writer, first questioning then confirming: It’s Allen Ginsberg! Viewers are hit by a similar realization upon recognizing: It’s David Cross! Cross morphs into Ginsberg with the simple addition of a full, glue-on beard with matching frizzy hair extensions. He doesn’t even need to change his glasses, and the transformation is complete. Then, in his brief yet highly enjoyable few scenes, Cross channels his inner bard to berate a statue of Jesus with Jude, stun the egotistical rocker with his own celebrity, and recite poetry in psychedelic montage, all in true Ginsberg fashion.

Daniel: Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman – MAN ON THE MOON

I think there has never been a more defining and career-changing bio-role than Jim Carrey in his stunning performance as comedian Andy Kauffman in Milos Forman’s 1999 film Man on the Moon. Carrey IS Kaufman in this movie for me (at that time, when I saw the film in the cinema, I had never even heard of Andy Kaufman) and for audiences everywhere.

Up until this point, Carrey had been America’s slapstick king with films like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, Dumb & Dumber, and Liar, Liar. Although he did appear in the more serious The Truman Show the year prior, his career was still mostly a wasteland of funny faces and constipation noises.

With this bio-pic, however, Carrey took on the daunting and serious task of recreating the life of one of the most bizarre and enigmatic figures in American culture. A comedian who got kicked off Saturday Night Live, who thought comedy was wrestling women and throwing toilet paper at poor people, and who had an alter-ego lounge singer of the highest schmaltz-order, Kaufman is not an easy person to understand. Yet Carrey captures the madness, the hilarity, and the idiosyncrasies spot-on.

More importantly, however, Carrey’s turn as Kaufman suddenly made Jim Carrey’s career make sense. Oh, we all collectively thought, this bizarre comedian has been pulling a prank on us for over a decade. He isn’t some idiot savant of facial contortions; he is a crazy person who is doing subversive art through re-inventing the halfwit.

Seeing the depth with which he was able to construct Andy Kaufman (his hero and apparent predecessor) allowed us all to see that Jim Carrey was a talented and highly intelligent actor/comedian who, like Kaufman, didn’t care if and why his audience was laughing as long as he was having fun.

A great bio-pic tells us just as much about the performer as it does about the subject, and here we found that balance perfectly.

Oh, bonus: Here’s a recently released clip of Carrey’s audition tape for the movie:

DANIEL

Alfred Hitchcock

1. Alfred Hithcock’s Vertigo
First of all, I have to say that much like many of my colleagues and friends, Hitchcock’s films were paramount for me in my initial bouts with cinephilia.  My grandmother would take me in for the summer and tie me into her reclining lazy boy chair not with ropes but with Rope, not like a psycho but with Psycho, and not with a frenzy but with Frenzy.  So Hitch has an important and major place in my heart.  It also stands that he is one of the most commanding directors, alongside Fellini, Kubrick, Bergman and Renoir in my pantheon of geniuses.  Vertigo is clearly the most personal work by this inspired artist, and its beautiful theme of obsession is matched perfectly with the extraordinary camera work and mise en scene that create a thrilling tale of suspense and deception.  I will always love this movie, and I’ll always love the man who made it.

2. John Waters’ Desperate Living
Okay, so I already mucked this up with an example of trash cinema.  Well, that’s what you get for asking for markers of taste.  John Waters is a role model to me as a person; his confident cool and perverted/deviant embrace of all that is bad is a wonderful lifestyle that always seems to put him in the right, and he always seems to be having a good time.  I think the world would be a much better place if we all asked “WWJWD” when we made decisions.  That said, Waters’ particular breed of disgusting excess is, to me, peaked in Desperate Living, a fucked up fairy tale that features Edith Massey’s most meaty role and the most unreal sex-change the cinema has ever portrayed.  It is a disaster of hilarious and gross moments that is Waters’ best film and my favorite pleasure, guilty or otherwise.

3. Jean Renoir’s La chienne
Oh, you don’t care for genre cinema or cult movies?  How about art films?  Well, it don’t get any more artsy Jean Renoir, the grand papa of classy cinema.  I could put Rules of the Game on here, a movie that is probably the greatest example of Bazinian realism and is a testament to fooling around with the bourgeoisie.  Instead, though, I think of Renoir’s first sound film, a mix of amazing cinematography and a story just sexy and illicit enough (basically its about an extra-marital relationship) that it can whet my whistle.  Whatever that means, I love the movie, and every frame reminds me of Jean Renoir, who moved the camera and adjusted the focus (and left it there) better than any Frenchman (or American) before or since.

4. The Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup
I’ve got to point out that the (writer)/director is not the only possible auteur in a film.  No, there are some talents that overwhelm the screen with each appearance, dominating story, cinematography and surroundings to command the action.  And no actor or group of actors wraps a film around their fingers better than the Marx Brothers.  When they make a movie, whether Room Service, A Night at the Opera, Go West, The Cocoanuts, Horse Feathers or any other, they obliterate the narrative.  Duck Soup is the cream of the crop; it is a political satire that is also a metaphor for the Brothers as filmmakers.  A nation (film) is in bad shape, so a bunch of oddballs show up and make things crazy, sadistically causing trouble and attacking all authority, and in the end resolution is unnecessary and irrelevant.  This choice also demonstrates my love for on-type acting; I prefer when an actor has only one character he does continually, as he can perfect this role and bask in its structural confines.  Groucho, Harpo and Chico achieved this like no other comedians.

5. David Cronenberg’s Videodrome
A videotape/gun being forced into a stomach/vagina.  Yeah, I’m pretty into this movie, which is equal parts hilarious and frightening.  The great thing about this movie, although there are many things that are great, is how much it is clearly the work of a brilliant creator.  Cronenberg, whose career was working up to this point with films like Shivers, Scanners, and The Brood, was exploring themes and images he had been dealing with throughout his career.  It is exciting cinema when you are able to see an artist go back to his old movies and admit that he still has more to say on the subject.  There is also something very special about Cronenberg’s films, a tactile and practical element to his unusual visuals that make him an artisan as well as an auteur.

6. Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange
7. Woody Allen’s Annie Hall
8. Frank Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It
9. David Lynch’s Blue Velvet
10. Ingmar Bergman’s Persona

Quentin Tarantino

STEPHEN

Woody Allen

1. Woody Allen’s Annie Hall
This film is deservedly recognized as an outstanding representation of Woody Allen’s willingness to take risks and do interesting things cinematically, such as giving voice to characters’ inner concerns through subtitles and using the occasional cheeky bit of animation or special effects work in a romantic comedy.  But more importantly, I believe that Annie Hall, as Chaplin’s City Lights had decades before, proved that a comedy could be capable of great depths of emotion, which continues to make laff fests lacking similar ambitions seem like only half-movies.  More than merely setting a benchmark not just for romantic comedy but comedy in general, Annie Hall changed my conception of what a comedic masterpiece should be; I feel like I’ve seen very few of them since.  Most of them are also Woody Allen films; does this mean that, in my mind, there is a Woody Allen comedy and then there’s everything else?  Perhaps that’s why he’s my number one auteur of choice; for me, like Hitchcock is for some, Woody Allen must be his own genre, for the sake of the other filmmakers.

2. Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God
In 1972, when Eraserhead was still a figment of imagination in David Lynch’s mind, Werner Herzog was busy working on his first of five crazed cinematic endeavors with Klaus Kinski.  Herzog proved himself in this film to be one of the great cinematic observers of nature, its physical beauty and its relentless difficulties.  With an opening shot of a troop of conquistadores and native guides winding their way down a misty mountain trail that established not only the scene but also Herzog as a talented sculptor of frame compositions, Aguirre, the Wrath of God proceeds to take the viewer on an unimaginable journey, putting its actors and extras through torments not far removed from the obstacles faced by the original explorers themselves.  Not many lead actors would have accepted this kind of mad direction, but then Kinski was no normal actor.  Many directors are often praised for their ability to work with actors, but how many of them can say they tamed the beast that was Klaus Kinski?  Even after Kinski’s demise, Herzog has continued to prove himself a master of the absurd; whether it’s Nicolas Cage or animal activist Timothy Treadwell or an Arctic penguin, Herzog will always have a subject to follow into madness.

3. Terrence Malick’s The New World
Malick’s films, with their sparse dialogue and majestic combinations of image and sound, optimize the full potential of the cinema as a uniting force.  His are films that are easily acceptable to all people, all ages, all languages, all religions, and to accept Malick’s style is to marvel at the sheer beauty of it all.  Emerging from a Malick screening, you feel as though you’ve not just gone to the cinema, but also attended the Philharmonic, listened in on a poetry reading, perused an art gallery, enjoyed a novel.  Film as the ultimate collaboration of all the arts that preceded it is never on finer display than in Malick’s work.

4. Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights
Probably the greatest surprise twist in the history of filmmaking is the final scene of City Lights when the flower girl looks upon the tramp for the first time, and you suddenly realize that you are crying.  This is the consummate craftsmanship of Charlie Chaplin.  After an hour or so of consistent laughter, Chaplin pulling out all the old tricks and making them fresh yet again, you realize once again in the climactic moments just how much Chaplin managed to evolve as a director from film to film.  Recognizing that he was capable of doing more than just gag-filled shorts for the rest of his career, Chaplin would ultimately create some of the great statement films with Modern Times and The Great Dictator, and he would deliver the total package of emotions in City Lights.  With his silent films, Chaplin could not really rely on words or music to carry the pictures, so he leaned on his instincts, biting nervously on his fingernail as he waits to see if the flower girl will accept him.  Having seen that image, who can forget it?

5. Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The masculine bravado.  The hesitant camaraderie.  The hazy delineations between what is good, what is bad, and what is just plain ugly.  Whereas you could always count on John Wayne to do the right thing, nothing and no one was sacred in Leone’s films.  Though many Westerns played it safe with righteous heroics or forged ahead with risky new ideas, Leone’s objectives were always simple and clear: make the Western into the grand mythology of our time.  The primal howls of Morricone’s score, the intense staredowns fixed close on darting eyes, these were gods with guns, the frontier their Olympic battlefield.  Not only important and intriguing in his own right, Leone’s ideals and filmmaking style influenced Eastwood’s own future career, which has wrought some great films of its own.

6. Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums
7. David Lynch’s Inland Empire
8. John Ford’s Stagecoach
9. Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs
10. The Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou

Write about five great Woody Allen films

We actually discussed and divied up the films before hand so that there would be no overlap, although, with the exceptions of Annie Hall, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, and Sleeper, there was almost no conflict. There is a surprising variety in these choices, too. Of the fifty or so Woody Allen movies, here’s the breakdown:

1 from the ’60s
5 from the ’70s
6 from the ’80s
1 from the ’90s
and 2 from the ’00s.

We’ve also decided to order them chronologically rather than by author. If you feel bold, in the comments you can try to guess who wrote which blurbs. Michael, Stephen, and Daniel each wrote five.

Take the Money and Run (1969)
With its mockumentary narrative voiceover, Take the Money and Run, like Zelig, resembles Allen’s New Yorker stories. Unlike Zelig, though, Take the Money does not seem terribly interested in making a point of any kind. Indeed, arguably more so than any of his other pre-Annie Hall films, Take the Money represents the purest comedic genius of Woody’s “earlier, funnier” films. It would not surprise anyone watching this film to learn that, just a few years earlier, Allen had been a writer on “The Sid Caesar Show,” as this film is basically a series of situational sketches tied together by the story of the decidedly untalented criminal Virgil Starkwell, played by Allen. Take, for example, the infamous bank robbery scene, in which Starkwell moseys up to the teller counter and passes the banker a note, informing him that he is being robbed. Unfortunately, the banker struggles to read Starkwell’s handwriting, forcing Starkwell to help an increasingly numerous group of bank employees read the note out loud. As Starkwell tries desperately to assure the bankers that he is pointing a gun, not a “gub,” at them, you realize that what you are watching would fit right into any TV sketch show, no background information necessary. With Take the Money, you see the natural comedic capabilities that initially helped Allen start the career we find ourselves discussing now.

Play it Again, Sam (1972)
The best film Allen starred in and wrote but did not direct, Play it Again, Sam is funny, intellectually poignant and, most of all, represents Allen’s peak as a style icon; his haircut, his tweeds, his cardigans, all show how unique and cool his style really is. In this film, Allen plays Allan, a poor film critic whose wife has recently left him because he was, among other things, a lousy lay. He goes on the prowl, searching for a replacement mate. Great set-up, right? Allen knocks it out of the park in this film, shoveling rice and hurling records like a schlemiel extraordinaire. Seeing Woody fail time and time again is a great play on the traditional protagonist struggling on the dating scene formula, and his defensive one-liners are top notch: “It never would have worked between us. She’s Protestant, I’m Catholic, it’s a great religious abyss.” In this picture, Allen/Allan gets the help of Humphrey Bogart’s ghost, who teaches him how to be himself and keep it cool. Basically, the whole film is an elaborate set up to recreate the climactic scene in Casablanca, and in an age before genre-pastiche and ornamental film-quotations, this picture reigns supreme.

Sleeper (1973)
Sleeper was the first Allen film I ever saw. I was pretty young, maybe about ten or eleven. I didn’t know what to expect. I don’t even remember if I knew who Woody Allen was at the time outside of “that guy who married his adopted daughter.” But, for a pre-teen male, this film had it all: sex, drugs, cryogenic freezing, a Utopian/Dystopian future (depending on who you ask), robot butlers, AN ORGASMATRON! I may not have been familiar with Allen’s work before Sleeper, but this film laid the seeds for what is quickly nearing a twenty year relationship with one of the most talented filmmakers to ever live.

Love and Death (1975)
This underrated Allen film is actually one of the most important, because it represents a transitional work between his two best-loved periods, the early-funny stuff and the artsy stuff. Prior to Love and Death, from 1965-1975, Allen made semi-light comedies like Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask and Bananas. These films are great, hilarious, and wonderful, but they lack the brilliance and social/intellectual satire that his later films have. After Love and Death, from 1975-1986, Allen made romantic films that (sometimes) used comedy to a much greater cerebral function. Smack in the middle of these eras is Love and Death, the parody of Napoleonic-Russia that is as wacky as it is intellectually confusing. Great references in this film to Eisenstein and Dostoevsky make this film look forward to his later work, while lowbrow, slapstick and non sequitur humor also refers to his earlier stuff. The film is funny, and offers a great, sexy role for Diane Keaton, who never got to be as funny as in this film.

Annie Hall (1977)
Annie Hall, the film that won Woody his first bald-headed statuette, is the quintessential Woody Allen picture. It plays out like a master’s class of cinematic thumb printing. Allen in the familiar lead role, this time as comedian Alvy Singer, plays a neurotic New York Jew enveloped in a doomed relationship with title character Annie Hall (Diane Keaton). The narrative follows the two from the inception of their relationship through its ultimately irreconcilable end. Allen utilizes every aspect of his filmmaking, relying heavily on the vibrant camera of dp legend Gordon Willis to produce one of the most honest and intimate depictions of relationships ever made. With Willis’ eye and Allen’s brain, the camera is able to take viewers whizzing through the streets of New York in Annie’s yellow convertible VW bug, into the bedroom for some not-so-intimate lovemaking, back into Alvy and Annie’s childhoods and past relationships, and even into their very minds. This film takes us everywhere in order to fully examine this crazy thing called love.

Manhattan (1979)
It doesn’t take a film scholar to point out Woody Allen’s love of New York City, and in Manhattan, his ultimate love letter to the island, he allows himself to work at the highest emotional level. The sweeping Gershwin music, the expert photography of Gordon Willis, the fireworks (really, there are fireworks); this is Allen’s most romantic film and, thus, his most hopeful. Although the ending may be somewhat ambiguous, if you’ve seen other Allen films like Annie Hall, you know that ambiguous is a step in the right direction for those seeking happy closure. This also seems to be the director’s most personal film. After laying down on the couch (engaging in some self therapy) and reciting a list of the things that, for him, make life worth living, Allen’s character runs after the young girl who loves him, worried that she will leave New York City and return a changed woman who is no longer interested in him. When she suggests that he ought “to have a little faith in people,” you sense that Allen is again self-analyzing. He’s telling himself to ease up a little, through his own fictional character. That’s the true measure of a great artist; when he can toss all his own anxieties up there onto the screen and make us believe they are worthy of our time and consideration.

Stardust Memories (1980)
Allen’s homage to Federico Fellini’s masterpiece 8½, Stardust Memories tells the chaotic tale of famed film director Sandy Bates. When I first watched this movie as an undergrad in one of the first film classes I ever took, I was under the impression that only the first few scenes paid homage to the Fellini picture. I had not yet seen 8½, and I wouldn’t find out until nearly a year later that it was nothing less than an Allen adaptation of the sixties classic. Allen’s Sandy Bates steps directly into the kinetic shoes of Marcello Mastroianni’s Guido Anselmi. Like Guido, Sandy is at a crossroads in his life and his art. The two characters reflect on their past loves and films in order to examine what has brought them to their present situations and hopefully to find out something about where they are going. For most of the film, Bates tromps around New York flagged by fans and critics who are often one in the same as suggested by the recurring critique: “I like your earlier, funnier movies.” While embracing the frenetic tone established by Fellini in his picture, Woody manages to weave in his patented auteur touches: a great jazz soundtrack, a divided love interest theme, psychoanalytic-heavy neurotic comedy, etc. In perhaps my favorite scene in the movie, the narrative is interrupted by a scene from one of Bates’ films. A special breaking news bulletin: Sydney Finkelstein’s hostility has escaped. Allen as Sydney leads a tracking team of police officers and hound dogs through a snow covered woods. The team stumbles upon the corpses of Sydney’s schoolteacher, his ex-wife, her alimony lawyer, and his brother Alvin (the one his family used to encourage to speak up). Off in the distance is a dark hairy hulk manhandling Sydney’s mother. If that’s not the embodiment of mommy issues, then I don’t know what is.

Zelig (1983)
In my junior year of high school, Turner Classic Movies had a month-long Woody Allen retrospective. I was home alone on the first night of scheduled programming, no plans to do anything with friends or family, and decided to watch the first film, Annie Hall. I was entranced by the film. However, I felt that Annie Hall was the kind of canonized masterpiece that I was destined to like; seemingly everyone, even those who don’t necessarily call themselves Woody fans, likes Annie Hall. How would I respond to another Allen film? Well, the next one I watched was Zelig, and if Annie Hall was the film that put Woody Allen on my radar, Zelig was the one that made me fall in love. Not only is it a film of remarkable inventiveness, employing some quietly revolutionary filmmaking techniques to insert Woody Allen into old newsreel footage as the cinema’s most intriguing conformist Leonard Zelig, but it also uses these images to send a thoughtful message about developing one’s own individuality. In later years, I would become a fan of Allen’s New Yorker short stories, and, in retrospect, Zelig may be the film that most closely resembles the unique narratives that Allen created in those pages, due in large part to its hilarious documentary voiceover and numerous cultural references. Zelig is much more than just a gimmick; it’s the smartest comedy ever made. And not just because Susan Sontag is in it.

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
This film features Mia Farrow’s greatest role in an Allen film, here playing a movie fan named Cecilia who is obsessed with the pictures. Obviously, it speaks to us cinephiles on a very personal level. in this film, something magical happens: the star of a film that Cecilia repeatedly attends jumps out of the screen, trying to create a relationship that spans diegetic spaces. The film is a parable for the cinema’s power of escapism, and the way that movie magic used to be much stronger than it is today. Can’t go wrong with those themes, can you? Allen has often been interested in experimenting with cinema time and space; consider Annie Hall, Deconstructing Harry, Husbands and Wives, Zelig, Melinda and Melinda, etc. This is one of the great, and successful, experiments in his career. The movies come to life in this funny and deep film that also features a strong performance from Jeff Daniels.

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
As much as I want to privilege Allen’s 1970s films, this picture always comes up as a masterpiece of Allen’s sophistication and insight into womankind. It also features one of the great scenes in Woody’s career as a (secret) optimist. Just as in the great scene in Manhattan where Isaac lists off all of the things that make life worth living (Louis Armstrong’s “Potato Head Blues,” Marlon Brando, Swedish Movies), this film has one of the great life-is-worth-living moments in cinema. At the brink of suicide, depressed beyond belief, Allen’s character Mickey walks into a cinema and what’s playing but the Marx Brothers’ Film Duck Soup. Mickey realizes that although life might be meaningless and empty and godless, at least there’s the Marx Brothers, who are really funny. This is a recurrent theme, basically, in all of his work: life is horrible, miserable, terrible and so on, but it’s all worth because of things like the Marx Brothers. In addition to this great scene, there’s also a pretty good love story featuring a great ensemble cast.

Radio Days (1987)
Radio Days is a cinematic representation of nostalgia that deserves to be mentioned alongside films like Bergman’s Wild Strawberries and Fellini’s Amarcord. Populated with dozens of rich characters, whether they be leads or make only brief appearances, the film uses memories of the once-important medium of radio to reconstruct a bygone era of family togetherness and local community. Essentially, it’s an entire film’s worth of those charming flashback sequences from Annie Hall. The most impressive aspect of the film is how expertly Allen captures the way in which we remember our childhood from a now mature perspective. We recognize the tensions and the passions of the adult world that had eluded our childhood understanding, shedding new light on those experiences, and Allen’s narration achieves that nostalgic experience cinematically. The final scene, in which some of the radio stars of the day congregate on a Manhattan rooftop on New Year’s Eve and wonder aloud if they will be remembered, is one of the most poignant of Allen’s career.

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
If you’ve seen Allen’s Interiors, then you’ve seen what it looks like when a director smothers his own genuine talent in a vane attempt to pay tribute to his most beloved filmmaking idols. On the other hand, if you’ve seen Crimes and Misdemeanors, you’ve seen what it looks like for a director to evolve that talent and do something far greater than simply paying homage. With Crimes, Woody Allen took his place alongside idols like Ingmar Bergman with a film made on his own terms. This is a “Bergman-esque” film only in the sense that it confronts issues like religious guilt and moral confusion, as Allen shares with Bergman the profound struggle to come to terms with these problems. But ultimately Crimes is a Woody Allen film through and through, delicately balancing Martin Landau’s moral dilemma involving an increasingly belligerent mistress with Allen’s own struggle to win Mia Farrow’s heart despite being married himself. The film’s conclusion, which sees Landau, after getting away with murder and living happily ever after with his wife, meeting up with Allen, who has committed no such crimes and yet is the more miserable of the two, has a laugh at the moral concept of “living with guilt.” And that’s what makes it a Woody Allen film; in the end, all you can do is laugh.

Sweet and Lowdown (1999)
Wanna go to the dump and shoot some rats? This underrated drama features the best score/soundtrack of any Allen film (and that is a bold statement), with the music of Dick Hymen and guitar work by Howard Alden recreating the beautiful style of Django Reinhardt. Sean Penn plays jazz guitarist Emmett Ray, a performer who is arrogant, tormented, and innocently mean-spirited. He strikes up a relationship with a mute girl, who is played here excellently by Samantha Morton channeling Harpo Marx, but ultimately treats her rottenly. Both performers were nominated for Oscars for their roles. Apparently, the structure of the film was written by Allen all the way back in 1969 and it took him thirty years to realize it and get around to making it. Thus, like Whatever Works, it is a newer film that is, in some ways, of the older style. It also features a brief cameo by John Waters! Those of you who have not seen it don’t realize just how beautiful this movie is. Emmett Ray is a disgusting man who is spiteful, egotistical, selfish, careless, etc. But he plays the guitar so well, and the scenes of his performances are transcendent, demonstrating the strange thing (in life), of how sometimes such ugly people can make such beautiful music. You will be moved by his playing, and sickened by his character.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
A warm vibrant color pallet, melodic Catalonian guitar music, a Spanish backdrop? Is this a Woody Allen picture? Yes, yes it is. And, Allen is in top form, as is everyone involved in this production. Javier Bardem follows-up his disturbing performance as the unrelenting, unwavering serial killer Anton Chigurh, in the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men (I’m choosing to ignore the easily forgettable Love in the Time of Cholera), with the alluring Catalonian painter Juan Antonio. Penélope Cruz turns out the film’s best performance as Juan Antonio’s suicidal, yet oddly still involved ex-wife. Rebecca Hall gives Cruz a run for her money as the American Master’s student Vicky, who is writing her thesis on Catalan identity. Even Scarlett Johansson does a good job as the yin to her best friend Vicky’s yang. As a freewheeling, spontaneous lover of life who doesn’t quite know what it is she’s seeking from it, Cristina is the perfect foil for the grounded and realistic Vicky. As the narrator aptly summarizes: “When it came to the subject of love it would be hard to find two more dissimilar viewpoints.” That is the crux of the narrative. In the hopes of finding whatever it is she’s looking for in love, Cristina explores the love options presented to her in Barcelona, specifically the ménage à trios relationship she forms with Juan Antonio and his no longer-so-ex-wife María Elena. Vicky confronts her unraveling convictions in stability and sensibility after a passionate night with Juan Antonio leaves her desiring more from love. This film is a culmination of nearly eighty years of pondering the intricacies of love and is Allen’s truest film on the subject since Annie Hall.

Whatever Works (2009)
Whatever Works proves that Allen’s filmmaking is aging like a fine wine. Allen returns to the older, cynical Jew meets younger, naive gentile storyline a la Annie Hall and Manhattan. Yet, with the substitution of the traditionally self-cast Allen for Larry David, the lead character Boris is infused with a little extra bite not present in the likes of an Alvy Singer or an Issac. The pairing of Allen and David is comedic gold.

What is the most overrated film?

Stephen: THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO – Woody Allen

Rather than bully a director or a film that is frequently called out as being overrated, I thought I would pick on someone my own size: Woody Allen. Like any fan of Allen’s films, I have only positive feelings about all of them but don’t necessarily agree with the consensus opinion about which ones are best. When The Purple Rose of Cairo hit theatres in 1985, critics immediately began declaring it one of Allen’s great masterpieces, and since then the film has been included on the New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list and Time Magazine’s Top 100 Films of All Time list. It’s a decent film, alright, but I’m not seeing a masterpiece here.

The lead performance by Mia Farrow reflects those aspects of her acting that I least appreciate, a kind of timid, mousy quality that is lurking underneath a great many of her roles. Her character, Cecilia, is being mistreated at home and at work by her husband and her boss, and she seems unable or unwilling to take action to stop it. Perhaps because Farrow was so notoriously mistreated by men in her own life, including Allen himself, I have a hard time watching her play a character going through similar problems (it was easier in Rosemary’s Baby; I mean, we all get a little mistreated by Satanic witch covens from time to time).

So, rather than tell off her A-1 A-hole husband, Cecilia escapes into the nearby movie theater. I’m normally all for cinematic paeans to moviegoing, but in this case, the moviegoer is portrayed as someone who is immature and ill-equipped to handle her life’s problems. I admit that I consider moviegoing to be an escape, the cinema being a place where I can think about something other than my problems for a while. But, when Cecilia goes to the movies, she experiences them with a certain wide-eyed naivete, staring up at the images on the screen hoping desperately that the movie might come to life and whisk her away into its fantasy environs.

Stop dreaming and start watching, Cecilia!

Sure enough, the adventure hero Cecilia has come to adore emerges from the screen and begins to woo her in her own world. This desire to escape not into the cinema but into the movie itself seems to me very childlike behavior, reflecting fanciful notions that are normally replaced with appreciations for storytelling and film craft as the film lover matures into adulthood. As a child, I watched Star Wars and imagined jumping into the Millennium Falcon and joining the Rebel Alliance; now, I watch in awe of the narrative and character development. I’ve grown up. Allen has spent his entire career making movies for adults starring adults; might I suggest that this film presented a unique opportunity for him to feature a child protagonist? It probably wouldn’t have worked, but to me, it’s what this film’s tone calls for.

I certainly wouldn’t place Purple Rose anywhere near the top of Allen’s best films list. Farrow has been much better in other Allen films, notably Zelig, Radio Days, and even Broadway Danny Rose, another of his films I can’t get very excited about. Indeed, Radio Days seems the most apt comparison. Allen has made clear in many interviews that both the radio and the cinema were heavily formative elements of his adolescence. Radio Days and Purple Rose are his tributes to bygone eras of radio listening and movie watching, and I think Radio Days, with its graceful notes of nostalgia and its vibrant characters, is definitely the more successful one.

Michael: CRASH – Paul Haggis

I can’t say what THE most overrated movie is, but I can say this: the 2006 Academy Award “Best Picture” winner Crash (2005) is an abysmal film. How it ever got nominated for an award let alone won three bald-headed statuettes is beyond me. And for “Best Picture” and, possibly even worse, for “Original Screenplay,” holy jeez. I remember watching the ceremony and being dumbfounded when they announced the winner of the big prize. Racism in LA. Wow, what a theme for a film. It’s so fresh and lively. That Paul Haggis is a genius. And, this is against good fare, people. Good Night, and Good Luck, Munich, Brokeback Mountain, Capote, these were the competition. Are you telling me Crash was a better picture than Munich? I know it’s not Stevie’s best film, but hey it’s better than Haggis’s dreck.

Now a TV show.

I wish I could say more about this film, but I haven’t bothered to return to it since I saw it six years ago. Since then I’ve been trying my hardest to forget it, so I don’t intend to return to it simply for plumping up this assignment response. It truly is not worth it.

Daniel: NETWORK – Sidney Lumet

Overratedness, or the art of being liked more than one should be. Fight Club? Gone With the Wind? The Shawshank Redemption? These are movies that people like more than they merit. Oh, and everything else directed by David Fincher, too. That guy has no talent.

Anyway, they probably aren’t the most overrated. It’s got to be a film of great historical relevance. It should be an Academy Award winner. Maybe something that people think is socially “important.”

I’m going to have to go with Sidney Lumet’s Network. God, do I hate that drivel, liberal-minded “allegory.” In case you don’t know, the story is about a TV news anchor who is fired after his ratings plummet. With two weeks left on his contract, he starts raving like a lunatic. The execs like his new hot-style, and they exploit his madness for the sensationalism.

The film climaxes with the lead, played by Peter Finch, screaming to the camera, asking his audience to scream out their windows. He suggests that people need to voice their anger, the rising disillusionment with the state of modern society. “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” That’s what he wants them to scream. How foolish! Yeah, right.

I'm very upset, and I will no longer put up with it!

This ridiculous, unbelievable plot is dazzled around for over two hours. The worst thing about this movie is that everybody thinks it is so great. It won 4 Oscars. Thankfully it didn’t win Best Picture (not even the Academy is dumb enough to think it is better than Rocky), but it did win best actor, actress, supporting actress, and original screenplay. Think of all the poor schlubs who rented the film just because of the DVD/VHS/Laserdisc box that read “Winner of 4 Academy Awards.” What a horror they were in for.

Nah, I’m just kidding. That movie is awesome.

Are there any actors/directors whose new films you will see regardless of any conditions?

Daniel

I chose this question because I think it is provocative and gets at the heart of moviegoing in the 21st century. As anyone interested in film history knows, the experience of cinemagoing is always changing. One of the major changes in the past century is a shift in audience perception from an actor oriented cinema to a director oriented cinema. So, in 1939, It’s A Wonderful Life is a Jimmy Stewart picture. Now, in 2010, it is most likely a Frank Capra film.

So, if I think about what directors’ films I would go to sight-unseen, the list is practically endless:
Woody Allen, Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodovar, John Waters, Coen Brothers, David Cronenberg, Steven Soderbergh, Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, Tim Burton, David Lynch, Larry Charles, Sam Raimi, Brian De Palma, Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Spike Lee, Noah Baumbach, Jared Hess, Rob Zombie, Caveh Zahedi, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater, Werner Herzog, Jody Hill, Martin Scorsese, and many more Many of these filmmakers (I’m looking at you, Joel and Ethan) make films I don’t even like. I am just interested in seeing the films made by the artists of our time.

Brian De Palma. I miss him.

Actors, on the other hand, represent a very different appeal. As I will hopefully have the venue to explain in more detail later, I generally hate actors and undervalue their contribution to the cinema greatly. Look: if Carl Dreyer and Robert Bresson can make the greatest films with nonactors, then I think that actors are not necessary.

That said, are there any actors that would bring me out to the movies? The actors I really admire: Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jason Schwartzman, Nicole Kidman, Mark Wahlberg, Ben Affleck, Julianne Moore, James Spader, Michelle Williams, Leonardo DiCaprio, Chris Eigeman, Chloe Sevigny, Bill Murray, the Wilson brothers, Willem Dafoe, etc. I like seeing them, I identify with them. But, and this is an exercise that is going to take more time than it’s worth, allow me to put forward the following arguments:
Breaking and Entering, The Jacket, The Marc Pease Experience, Nine, Max Payne, State of Play, Next, Shadow of Fear, Deception, Body of Lies, Maid in Manhattan, Zodiac, City of Ember, Drillbit Taylor, xXx: State of the Union. That is one movie for each person I put forward that I hope I never have to see.

Yeah, I said Chris Eigeman. So what? I love that guy.

The truth is, good actors make many more bad movies that good directors do. This is especially strange because they get paid more and need to work less. That said, I have grown to not trust actors’ judgments, so I do not attach myself to the actor as I do for the director.

The only exception, and i think it is one we should consider, is the comic actor. The comedy genre is typically one that is separate from the mainstream cinema in style and content. It is also very much an actor’s medium, and the number of good comedy directors is very, very small (Woody Allen, Kevin Smith, Christopher Guest, John Lasseter, John Waters, Jody Hill).

Good comic performers, however, are abundant, and I think they may draw me to the cinema more than any straight actor would. Even thought I was very disappointed with Bruno, I would still see a new Sacha Baron Cohen movie. Seth Rogen, Craig Robinson, Aziz Ansari, Jonah Hill, all the same. If I knew they were in a new movie, I’d schlep down to the cinema to see it.

But what about Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa?

That is basically true. I could point out that I didn’t see Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, Horton Hears a Who!, Miss March, The Rocker, and Strange Wilderness. Oh, this is hard.

I guess the truth is there isn’t really a single actor that I am committed to. This may explain a lot about contemporary cinemagoing.

Stephen

My loyal affinities for directors like Werner Herzog, Woody Allen, and Spike Jonze and actors like Jude Law, Ethan Hawke, and Anne Hathaway have been well-documented on this website, but those filmmakers are easy to like because they so rarely contribute to a bad movie. Perhaps the more interesting answer here would be to point out an actor whose work I will always see even though his films have often disappointed me, and that actor would be Peter O’Toole.

Trying to remember that girl's name from last night.

It may be obvious to say that O’Toole has been in a great many wonderful movies, but I’m willing to bet that you haven’t even seen half of them. He’s known for the two historical epics that shot him to stardom, Lawrence of Arabia and Becket, as well as the sharply witty verbal duels with Katharine Hepburn that sustain the 1968 classic The Lion in Winter. But have you seen him as Dr. Fritz Fassbender in Woody’s What’s New Pussycat? Or as the Errol Flynn-esque washout Alan Swann in My Favorite Year? Or how about his finest performance as Jack Arnold Alexander Tancred Gurney in The Ruling Class, where he plays a man who spends most of the film believing he is Jesus Christ before ultimately deciding that he is, in fact, Jack the Ripper? These are in addition to some of his fine recent films, including his Oscar-nominated role in Roger Michell’s wonderful Venus and the snobby food critic in Ratatouille.

With such great work to his credit, what’s to stop everyone from loving this guy as much as I do? Plenty, as a matter of fact, and here is where the disappointment comes in. There were the two musical train wrecks he inexplicably decided to star in, Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Man of La Mancha. How could we forget his performance as Zaltar in Supergirl: The Movie? And of course, he did participate in two of the worst films ever made about ancient times, Troy and Caligula. One was about Greece, the other about Rome, both equally terrible.

But even when getting himself into a bad movie, as he frequently has, O’Toole brings his familiar wide-eyed spirit to each role. Fueled by booze and loose women, O’Toole and his pal Richard Burton really were living the high life in the 1960s, and you can’t help but notice that glint in O’Toole’s eye in all of his films, as if he’s thinking about what he has planned after the shoot tonight. This vivaciousness obviously serves his What’s, New Pussycat? and My Favorite Year roles, not to mention his King Henry II in both Becket and The Lion in Winter, as these characters are all boozers and womanizers. But the same traits that made his lust for alcohol and dames so palpable in those films informed the lust for life, glory, and revolution that he displays as T.E. Lawrence, his most famous role. Looking into those eyes, both British and Arabic officials alike can see this man is looking to start some trouble.

Still horny after all these years.

As fine as his voice work for Ratatouille was, I hope O’Toole doesn’t retreat to the recording studio in his old age. These cartoons, as lifelike as they have become, cannot hope to match the expressive work of art that is Peter O’Toole’s face, which you’ll know is still in fine, lascivious form if you’ve seen Venus. I noticed on IMDb that, in addition to a few of the usual historical dramas, O’Toole is shooting a futuristic movie called Eager to Die, in which his character Lord Pelican is a politically incorrect television personality who is frequently the target of government assassinations. This probably won’t sell many tickets, but you can certainly count me in.

Michael

Official Selections:
First and foremost, Tim Burton is a must see. I have watched every film he’s put out in theaters since Mars Attacks! (1996) and will continue to do so till the day I die. While his films are not always the best pictures of the year (in fact, they rarely are) they always crack my top ten. Burton just strikes a chord in me that few other directors do, and it is a chord that has been ringing since I was but a wee lad. As a result, I attach a great deal of nostalgia to his films, even his new ones. It should come as no surprise then that I am eagerly awaiting this year’s Alice in Wonderland, a director-narrative pairing that is not made in heaven exactly, but rather some more twisted, darker, black and white striped re-imagination of it.

It should also come as no surprise, then, that Johnny Depp is one of those actors that puts me in the theater seats every time. While I have talked with some that are at their ends with his eccentric mannerisms, I really can’t get enough. Similar to my relationship with Burton’s filmmaking, my Johnny jonesing also started at a young age with the horribly wonderful, after school special-esque, undercover cop television program 21 Jump Street. So by the time I saw Johnny get splattered all over his ceiling by a puss-ridden Robert Englund, I was sold.

While I don’t want to spend too much time going into these next two selections, I’ll say that I never miss a Tarantino or Coen Bros. film. These three filmmakers take up a whole shelf on my DVD rack (well, maybe not a whole shelf—I use a pretty big bookshelf—, but throw in Burton and it definitely spans the board). And, while Burton’s films are rarely my top selection for the year Tarantino and the Coens frequently vie for number one.

And, finally, I haven’t missed a Scorsese picture in years (at least not his narrative works). Daniel asked me once whom I considered to be the biggest living legend working today. Immediately I answered Scorsese. Despite his 5’4” stature, he’s as big as they come in my eyes.

Some rising interests or right on the cusps:
Woody Allen: While I am willing and eager to watch anything he puts out, I don’t always catch them in the theater. Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), definitely! Scoop (2006), I’ll wait for home video.
Danny Boyle and David Fincher – These two are right up there, and most likely should be on the list, but because I missed Sunshine (2007) and Panic Room (2002) some years back, I’m hesitant to put them on the list just yet.
Rian Johnson – The writer/director of Brick (2005) and The Brothers Bloom (2008) is a relative newbie to my radar, but my interests are peaked and I’m keeping my eyes locked on his in development picture Looper, supposedly due out this year.

What sequel would you most like to see, and why?

Stephen: DR. STRANGELOVE 2 OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP MASTURBATING AND CLOSE THE MINESHAFT GAP

As much as I have fallen in love with the glorious visual masterpieces helmed by Stanley Kubrick, from 2001 to Eyes Wide Shut, I can’t help but lament that he never again tapped the rich vein of humor that allowed him to make one of the top comedies of all time, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Even those who have not seen the film are probably aware of its more popular moments, including “You can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!,” “You can’t let him in here! He’ll see the Big Board!,” and the iconic shot of Slim Pickens gleefully riding atop a nuclear bomb as it falls to the ground.

Of course, the film has much more to it. There’s the irreplaceable Sterling Hayden as General Jack Ripper, who will stop at nothing to “protect our precious bodily fluids.” And there is what I believe to be the funniest conversation in the history of movies, despite the fact that one of the two participants cannot even be heard. The entire conversation is left to the brilliant comic mind of Peter Sellers, playing the American President, and boy does he knock it out of the park.

The film comes to an infamously abrupt ending. Dr. Strangelove (also Sellers), the American President, and George C. Scott’s character, General Buck Turgidson, are in the War Room discussing how they might recover from a nuclear Holocaust. Dr. Strangelove proposes that they move the most important citizens into underground caves and mineshafts, where they could reproduce and repopulate the earth. As Turgidson begins to worry that other mineshaft tribes might emerge with greater power than his own, creating a “mineshaft gap,” and as Dr. Strangelove suddenly rises from his wheelchair and declares “Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!,” we cut to a montage of nuclear explosions. Does this mean the world has succumbed to nuclear annihilation at that very moment, rendering meaningless any plans this goofy group might have made?

I can picture that mineshaft now, Strangelove thinks, filled to the brim with fertile women.

What if this isn’t the case, and President Muffley, General Turgidson, and Dr. Strangelove all made it into that mineshaft? What a movie that would have been! First of all, it would have retained the best characters from the original film; Hayden and Sellers’ third character, British Captain Lionel Mandrake, have their moments but ultimately can’t match the zaniness going on in the War Room. And, ironically, it would have made Hayden’s attempts to preserve our precious bodily fluids all the more understandable. In the mineshaft, as Dr. Strangelove suggests, men would need to be impregnating women on a regular basis, perhaps meaning that masturbation would have to be outlawed for the time being as a waste of those precious bodily fluids. I would love to see President Muffley and the womanizing General Turgidson deal with this sexual repression.

Indeed, I don’t think I’m alone when I say that more movies with Peter Sellers in them would always be welcome. From Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther series to Woody Allen’s early works Casino Royale and What’s New Pussycat, Sellers’ very presence endowed his movies with instant comedic credibility. The man has never failed to make me laugh, and in Dr. Strangelove the actors around him rise to the occasion, with Hayden and Scott showing comedic sensibilities that may come as a shock to those familiar with their usual work.

Speaking of George C. Scott, it would also have been nice to see a really good sequel to Robert Rossen’s The Hustler, instead of what proved to be maybe the worst movie Martin Scorsese has ever made.

Daniel: THE MALTESE FALCON 2: ON THE HUNT IN ISTANBUL

It’s no secret that I love The Maltese Falcon. Humphrey Bogart, who is one of my all-time favorite actors and style icons, delivers his finest performance as detective Sam Spade. The aesthetic achieved by the brilliant director John Huston is stunning and established one of the great genres of Classical Hollywood, the film noir. The screenplay, based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett and translated to the screen by Huston, is a perfect private eye story full of some of the funniest and craziest lines in film history.

The real gems of the movie, however, are the supporting actors. Elisha Cook Jr. is great as the fall guy. Sydney Greenstreet is the delectable “Fat Man” Kasper Gutman. The most outstanding role of the film is played by my favorite character actor Peter Lorre, the double crossing madman Joel Cairo. His insanity is beautiful.

Toward the end of the film, when the villains find out that statue is in Constantinople, they are conflicted. Lorre, as ever, is furious and uncontrollable. Greenstreet, on the other hand, is cool as ice. Here’s the exchange:

Greenstreet: Well sir, what do you suggest? Shall we stand here and shed tears and call each other names, or shall we…go to Istanbul?
Lorre: You are…
Greenstreet: For seventeen years I’ve wanted that little item, and have been trying to get it. If I must spend another year on the quest–well, that will be an additional expenditure in time of only…five and fifteen-seventeenths percent…
Lorre (laughing) : I’ll go with you.

The last time I watched the film, I was ecstatic, ridiculously imagining my two favorite characters from the film. After that scene is the famous confrontation scene between Bogart and Astor, and then the police bust in and tell them that they caught Greenstreet and Lorre. But, I ask you, what if the police were lying? What if Lorre and Greenstreet got away, and really continued their quest into Istanbul?

Lorre and Greenstreet disregard Astor and plot their next move.

This would be a buddy movie for the history books. Lorre’s maddening shrieks and ghastly faces would match perfectly with Greenstreet’s calm one-upsmanship. Think of the adventures they would get into trying to find the real Maltese Falcon. The possibilities are endless…

Michael: BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA 2 & THE THING 0

I have to warn you, I’m definitely cheating a bit here with this submission, but hey it’s a “sequel” I’ve wanted for some time now and I’m finally getting my wish, so I feel justified. With that said, as a child one of my favorite films was John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China. It was the ultimate guy movie made for geeks, and I loved it. The Chinatown back drop, ancient Chinese magic, gorgeous green eyed beauties, CB radio boasting, monsters, villains that look like they’ve been pulled right from Mortal Kombat, KURT RUSSELL!!! What didn’t this film have? It was no wonder when I watched Carpenter’s The Thing that it skyrocketed to the top of my horror movie list.

(Okay, wait, wait. Let’s just stop right here for a moment. I chose to use this nostalgic memory of Big Trouble in Little China to build up my introduction to The Thing, which was going to be my sequel selection. But, in writing about Big Trouble, I’m thinking this would be a pretty good selection in itself. So here it goes. Two selections. Seems appropriate, right? Sequels being a second installment to a film, it’s fitting to have two selections, right. So, cheat #1: two selections)

Selection number one: Big Trouble in Little China 2, the sequel too late in coming. This film would have been great. Jack Burton returns to battle the forces of evil a second time and to once again set straight the balance of the universe. Goofy, egotistical, sleeveless Jack Burton gets to “kinda feel invincible” once more. How perfect would that have been? But this was a film that would have had to been made in the 80s, while Kurt Russell was still young and the culture still ripe for self parodic, action adventure films where the parodied action is enjoyed both for the parody and also its kickassedness (No, I didn’t just make that word up. And, if you have to ask that, then surely you didn’t watch action movies in the 80s).

This looks like the box art for a Nintendo game.

Selection number two: The Thing prequel (AKA cheat #2/ cheat #3). Those of you with your ear to the film industry grindstone have no doubt heard that a The Thing prequel (cheat #2) is in the works (cheat #3). Universal is pairing young directing talent Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. with Battlestar Galactica scribe Ronald D. Moore for a prequel centering on the Norwegian expedition team we see in the opening of the film. Remember? The film opens in the expansive white terrain of Antarctica. Two men in a helicopter, one with a rifle, are hunting down a poor, defenseless dog. He shoots, misses. Shoots, misses. The dog keeps trucking, intent on escaping this lunatic hunting fanatic, or so we’re led to infer. The men follow the dog to a US science station manned by Kurt Russell and company. A mishandled grenade takes out one of the two men and the copter, while the other is put down by a well delivered .45 slug to the noggin.

One can only hope the prequel will stick with handcrafted effects such as this lovable creature.

Crazy Norwegian bastards. We soon find that this is no dog. It is a shapeshifting alien using tactical disguises to ensure its survival. The crazed hunters are not hunters at all, but rather a Norwegian science expedition, not unlike our American protagonists. They uncovered something in the ice that drove them mad turning them into rifle wielding maniacs. How does this intro not beg a prequel? So, while it is most definitely a cheat, two in fact, my official sequel selection is The Thing prequel.

What movie are you the most reluctant to admit you saw in a theater? Describe and explain.

Michael: TRANSFORMERS (2007) at the Regency Carter Theater in Long Beach, CA, sometime in the Fall of 2007

Let me preface this by first saying that I am not generally ashamed of the films I watch in the theater. I am of the opinion that when you pay between $7 and $15 to watch a movie in the cinema, you better be damn certain the gamble is worth the dough. (My DVD rentals, on the other hand…)

With that said, ordinarily I wouldn’t even consider watching Transformers (2007) in the theater and never for fifteen bucks. But, like so many that got suckered into watching this transforming travesty, my childhood nostalgia for the original cartoon series eventually got the better of me.

Even so, I wasn’t jumping at the opportunity to see Michael Bay’s interpretation of Autobots. I mean he’d probably turn Jazz into some jive-talkin’ wanna-b-boy, right? So, even after people started telling me it was worth watching (wrong!), I held strong. It was a DVD rental for sure. Or so I kept telling myself. Little did I know that after Transformers left first-run theaters with an embarrassingly profitable $300 million plus domestic gross—and just when I thought I was in the clear—it rose again in the dollar theater down the block from me.

This just screams “bad idea”

I broke down; Michael Bay had won. I dragged my then girlfriend—now wife—Cara along and slapped down the $4 for a pair of tickets. What could I do? All the, “You gotta see it in theaters, man,” had finally got to me. And for a $2 a ticket, it had to be worth that, right? Wrong. We sat in the dark, popcorn balancing on the armrest between us, and watched as Michael Bay distorted my childhood memory, like so many shifting robots, into an incomprehensible jumble of rotating metal, nonsensical character motivations, and bad acting.

I knew it! I KNEW IT! How did he ever win? I mean, $2 is a good price for a movie ticket anywhere, but how did I allow myself to get sucked into a bloated blockbuster directed by an even more bloated director. And to top it off with the much detested Shia LaBeouf. Really? It boggles my mind. Is the sweet memory of days past so strong so as to leave me utterly powerless in the face of big-budget branding revamps? Never again. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), hell no, didn’t see it. Because, as the old George W. saying goes “fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.” Right?

So I say once more, never again, Mr. Bay…Now, I wonder when that Nightmare on Elm Street remake comes out?

Daniel: DAREDEVIL (2003) at the Showcase Cinema in Revere, Valentine’s Day, 2003

This is a difficult question for me. For the most part, I embrace my guilty pleasures by trumpeting them as “camp.” Sure, I sometimes go to bad movies. In the year 2009 alone, I would say that I knew The Final Destination, The Haunting in Connecticut, The Goods: Live Hard Sell Hard, and (The) Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire were going to be horrible but I went anyway. Nevertheless, it seems that regret and anticipated disappointment are not really the core emotions that this prompt targets.

I would also say that much of my guilty viewing occurs on television. Have I seen every episode of “Jersey Shore?” Very much yes. I also regularly watch “How I Met Your Mother,” a program much too mainstream to be in my taste. Still, I will champion these low-culture products as either camp, as in the first case, or slightly subversive, as in the second (wait for it) case.

I really can’t say I am truly reluctant to admit that I saw anything in the theatre. I regret and condemn, but it is all in the quest for cinema treasure. So I will have to slightly modify this prompt in my case. I am embarrassed to admit to a couple of films, either because my expectations were so high, or because the situation was ridiculous.

If I really have to search through my tragic memory, I would be forced to go way back to the year 2003. I was nearly 15 at the time, and I was dating a blonde of 17 by the name of Brittany. The film was to be released on Valentine’s Day, conveniently a Friday.

It was an innocent time then. I was young, and Ben Affleck was still dating Jennifer Lopez. He used to be cool, a cocky but upright guy who had a special way with the ladies. I looked up to Affleck, and at the time he was probably my favorite actor (hey, show me someone else who can get a lesbian Joey Lauren Adams into bed and I’ll recant my admiration for the schlub).

So, obviously, it’s Valentine’s Day and I’m expected to cook up a date for this beauty. Well, I love cinema, I love Affleck. There’s a new film directed by Mark Steven Johnson, the auteur who previously helmed the dreck-fest known as Simon Birch. So I got in her black Ford Taurus and directed her to the Showcase Cinema in Revere (pronounced: Ra-vee-ah). How romantic! We took our seats and held hands throughout the entire running time of that dreadful movie featuring Jennifer Garner and Colin Farrell: Daredevil.

Unforgettable. That’s what you are.

Stephen: THE PRINCESS DIARIES (2001) at some AMC theatre in Houston, TX in the summer of 2001

When I was fifteen, I spent a few days of the summer in Houston with my parents. We were in town because my father had to attend a law seminar, which meant that my mother and I had a lot of free time during the day. Having exhausted all other options, she and I decided to see a movie.

In case you have forgotten, let me remind you that the movie situation in Houston at that time was rather chilling. Some of the films that had been released in the previous weeks included: Legally Blonde, Jurassic Park 3, America’s Sweethearts, and Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes. Two of those films had already disappointed me, and two of them I had no intention of seeing. On this particular Friday, Rush Hour 2 had just come out, but considering that my father also wanted to see that movie, the Tucker-Chan redux was not an option. Which left my mother and me with just one option: Disney’s The Princess Diaries.

Standing there at the box office with this decision before me, I weighed the pros and cons. Obviously, the pro side was going to the movies, which is by default something I enjoy doing, regardless of the film being shown. On the other hand, this was a film clearly targeted toward those young girls who sleep proudly underneath their Disney Princess (TM) bedsheets and that select group of filmgoers who only go to the cinema if there is potential for a Julie Andrews nipple slip. Ultimately, realizing that it was either going to be this movie or the mall, we bought our tickets and went in.

As a fifteen year old male, the last thing I wanted, even in a city in which I didn’t actually live, was to be seen with my mother watching The Princess Diaries. Needless to say, this is not a story I related to my friends once I returned home. But I will say that I secretly appreciated the experience for one reason: at the very least, I was able to discover Anne Hathaway, whose modest stardom I began predicting that very day. I could see she was beautiful, and, perhaps because of the film’s regal trappings, I felt certain that she would most likely turn out to be a very classy lady, which she has.

If only I could go back to this point and beg her not to do Rachel Getting Married.

As for the movie, meh. I spent most of the film being distracted by Hathaway’s looks, remembering Welcome to the Dollhouse every time Heather Matarazzo came onscreen, and scanning the theater to make sure I didn’t recognize anyone who might betray my humiliating predicament.

What about you? If you have something to confess, leave a comment below.

Describe your favorite experience in the cinema in the past 10 years.

*Michael will not be participating this week because he is in Brazil getting married.

Daniel: MANHATTAN (1979) at the Film Forum in New York, March 28, 2008

I was living in New York, in the East Village, while attending the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. It was my senior year, and I was working hard to relax for my last semester. I was awaiting acceptance letters from graduate schools. I was also in a long distance relationship with my girlfriend Corinna, who at the time was freezing her pretty little butt off in Siberia.

I didn’t have many friends, so I often found myself going to the cinema alone. I had subscriptions/memberships to many of the cinema and film clubs in the city, and I spent most weekends in the dark recesses of Manhattan, enjoying the unreeling of old 35mm gems. This Friday night I went to the Film Forum for a double feature as part of their United Artists retrospective. The first film was Woody Allen’s Manhattan, followed shortly by Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull.

I had seen Manhattan many, many times before. In fact, I had seen a 16mm print of it as part of the NYU collection back in September 2006. I had never, however, seen it on 35, and definitely never in a proper theatre. It is one of my absolute favorite films, both for the gorgeous cinematography as well as the ideal and hilarious screenplay. From the opening moments (which incidentally is the greatest opening in post-studio cinema), my hair was raised and my heart as warm as a cauldron.

The opening is done in voice over, while Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” slowly makes its way into the scene. Allen, as Isaac, is reading a narration about New York, but he repeatedly starts over, trying to find the correct tone to start his novel (and, by extension, this film). For me, this has always been a funny and incredibly poignant moment about identity, about love, and about location. The black and white still-camera shots, lensed by the famous Gordon Willis, are breathtakingly beautiful; New York has never been captured better, nor made to look so vibrant and austere. The scoped celluloid shining on the wall made it all the more luscious.

But the truly wonderful, transcendent moment came at the end of the opening. Allen points his camera toward the New York City skyline as Gershwin’s song comes to a crescendo. Fireworks begin to flare at the top of the frame as bursts of white light against the black night sky. With each explosion, the little auditorium on W Houston filled up with light and flickered back to darkness. Every face in the crowd was alternating illuminations, and the music was so climactic and strong.

It was clear to me that this is what the cinema is really all about. Our art is about light and dark, about being in the shadows and seeing hope on the horizon. In this venue, I was able to have that as a group experience, to see the whole room taken over by the cinema, no longer a theatre but merely a room full of lightness and darkness.

After that, Raging Bull had no chance.

Stephen: THE NEW WORLD (2005) at Starplex Galaxy in Waco, TX, sometime in 2005

In the past ten years, I have been lucky enough to enjoy many memorable and meaningful experiences in the cinema. More than a few of them took place during the six months I spent in New York City as an undergraduate: I will never forget going to see Pan’s Labyrinth during my second day there, happy in the knowledge that I had a whole six months in the city ahead of me, or the time I sought out the sleaziest cinema in Brooklyn to watch Grindhouse, or the afternoon I went to see David Lynch’s Inland Empire and watched as, one-by-one, members of the audience began to trickle out until only a few fellow weirdos and I remained. And I will always treasure the night I saw Synecdoche, New York at the Regal Arbor in Austin, TX, with Daniel and Corinna, the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

But if there is one experience in particular that solidified my love for the cinema, that designated once and for all a movie theater as my refuge of choice, it would be the weekday afternoon at the Starplex Galaxy in Waco, TX, when I saw Terrence Malick’s The New World for the first time. At that moment, in that town, I was apparently the only person interested in seeing this film, and I found myself alone in a 250-seat theater. For the next two-and-a-half hours, it was just me and the movies.

And what a movie it was. From Malick’s observant camera to the restrained performances, the lush natural settings to the generous use of Wagner’s magnificent prelude to Das Rheingold, the film seemed to rely on just about every cinematic tool except dialogue. I had never before seen a film so untethered from the bonds of literature and the stage; I felt as though I was watching pure cinema, and the simple fact that I enjoyed it came as a great relief to me.

Like her, I was transfixed, astonished.

As an undergraduate student of film, I occasionally felt as though my initial passion for the cinema was being buried under theory rather than enlightened or expanded by it, and I would wonder if I had made the right decision when I chose to turn a childhood hobby into a career obsession. In the days before The New World, I was at my lowest point in this regard, but Malick’s film vaulted me to a height from which I have still not come down. Oh yeah, I thought as the images flashed before my eyes, this is why I’m here, this is why I’m doing what I’m doing.

When the film came to a close and the credits rolled, though, I found that I couldn’t bring myself to leave the theater. I suddenly remembered how dull the world outside the theater had become, and I had no desire to return to it. But then I thought of a reason, and I walked out of the theater with the singular purpose of collecting as many friends as I could find and bringing them back to the theater to see the film for themselves. It is a purpose that I have carried with me through my work, through this blog, every minute of my life. For me, The New World was more than just invigorating. It was reinvigorating.

Stephanie: LE FABULEUX DESTIN D’AMÉLIE POULAIN (2001) at Montgomery Cinema in New Jersey, Winter 2001

The small New Jersey town where I moved when I was eleven years old and stayed until I left for college had one movie theater. Six screens, family-owned, in the shopping center that was essentially the hub of our town, since it also contained the pharmacy, the grocery store, the video store, one of the better pizza places, and the toy store. Sometime around 2000 the family who owned it bought another theater in the next town over. From then on, they programmed mainstream Hollywood film to that theater, and independent and foreign releases to our theater.

In the winter of 2001, I was fifteen years old, a sophomore in high school. I had never seen a subtitled movie outside of school. It would be another year before I got my first job clerking at a video store. I didn’t know how to drive, wasn’t even eligible for a permit for about another six months. So when my parents wanted to make another trip to Home Depot (they’re real do-it-yourselfers), I don’t know what possessed me to ask them to drop me at the movies instead. None of my friends could come. I didn’t know anything about the movies playing that weekend, hadn’t even read reviews or summaries in the paper.

I don’t remember the decision process that led to me purchasing a ticket to the matinee of Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain from my friend Adam’s older brother, who was working at the theater that afternoon. I remember that I bought some M&Ms at the concession stand, that I didn’t realize the film was in French until it started playing, that I was the only person in the very small theater that afternoon, and that I had plainly and simply never seen anything like Amélie.

I probably looked pretty much like this that day.

I don’t know what the pop culture buzz was surrounding this film at the time; it has obviously become a fairly mainstream crossover hit in the years since, to the point where it can probably still be purchased at a retailer like Best Buy, a rarity for a foreign film. Describing my viewing experience that afternoon in a way that adequately conveys the extent to which this film was so strange and new and wonderful is probably impossible. But can you imagine never seeing the color green and then one day looking at new spring grass? Can you imagine a life of movies sitting sedately before you, leading you safely through the same five narratives over and over, and then being grabbed by the arm and breathlessly told, “Come here, you have to see this, but I can’t tell you what it is until we’re there!” Alone in the darkness of a room I thought I knew, Amélie unfolded before me, with all its color and playfulness, and asked me to be curious, to be patient, to look, as Nino looked, not at the statue, but to where the statue points.

Amélie was released on DVD sometime that summer, and I demanded that my family watch it with me. Afterward, my mother wrinkled her nose and said it was too weird, and my father declared that if he wanted to read, he’d buy a book. I didn’t care. I’d seen a new color, and I wanted to see more.